while the old RSR was temporarily down you may have read on the WoT portals these following changes about maps (this has to do with the map feedback gathering I posted weeks ago):

The Stalingrad and Kharkov maps will be reworked, but will remain in the game until they are replaced.

The probability of the Kharkov map appearing will be greatly decreased to match the probability of getting Stalingrad, which we reduced earlier based on your previous feedback.

Map selection restrictions placed on lower-tiered tanks (Battle Tiers 4+) will also be altered to provide you with a wider range of maps on which you can use your favourite lower-tiered tanks.

I gathered a Q&A on maps from the SEA office for you:

-The Mittengard in clanwars is a dev error, they will be fixing it soon / current unknown eta.

-Stalingrad and Kharkov were the leading contenders for getting some work done to them on all servers , NA/EU/RU/Asia. They have some issues and low FPS’s for smaller spec computers. Continue reading →

On March 1, 2016 World of Tanks servers will be temporarily down for 45min to a hour, the game will receive the 9.13_7 Micropatch.

Time zones

EU: 05:00 to 05:45 CET

NA: 01:00 Pacific Time (9:00 UTC)

SEA: 10:00 UTC+8 (01 March, 2016, 02:00 UTC)

As usual players are left asking what’s in the patch without receiving an answer from staff, I searched around and SEA says that its a restart to the ladder season (Strongholds battles, besides skirmishes).

What is holding WoT back?

WG seems increasingly interested in promoting WoT as a viable eSports game. Unfortunately, WoT has a few huge barriers it must overcome to match the success of games like CS:GO/DoTA/LoL.

1. The general server population plays a different game than the eSports version:

Competitive tanks comes in the form of the 7/68 Attack/Defense mode. If I said that sentence to a rando they probably wouldn’t understand me. Not only is it 7 v 7 instead of 15 v 15, but it has specific composition restrictions and a map mode that isn’t in the random pubs. I don’t think your average Joe playing pubs would immediately understand what’s going on in a competitive tanks match. It’s just so foreign to the normal game. The random queue matches a pub plays in DoTA/CS:GO are pretty much the same match formats a pro plays at a LAN tourney. A DoTA pub can understand what is going on in eSports matches and can even apply things they learn to their own pub matches.

2. To access the competitive side of tanks, the general server population has to grind a significant amount of endgame content:

If I tell my friend that I play competitive tanks, they might say: “cool, can I try it out with you?” Invariably, I have to say no because they don’t have the tanks to even try anything near the competitive side of tanks. eSports tanks are now primarily tier 10. The amount of time and effort to grind these tanks just to try them out is asking a lot of the general server population. Let alone building a whole stable of tanks worthy of competing with: Hours and hours of gameplay. And if they don’t buy premium time/tanks, it gets exponentially worse. How can a random pubbie get excited about eSports tanks if the tanks themselves are essentially out of reach? This isn’t so in other eSports games. DoTA comes with everything from the start. CS:GO is similar. LoL at least gives players access to a rotation of heroes from the start. Continue reading →